Shelfjacked or "Dude! Where's my game?"

[rust]

But yeah, $15-$25, take a chance. $30-$40, an established line you already enjoy or a product you've thoroughly researched. $40+, birthday or Christmas present only, if you can get a relative to buy it for you.

The same here.

[Toadmaster]

D&D 4th ed Players handbook is $35 and two more books are required by at least the GM to play, Gurps Characters is $39 and again, at least the GM has to buy a minimum of another $35 book to play, HERO again has a $39 players guid with additional books required by the GM, BRP is $45, so I'm really not seeing $60 as that big a stretch for a quality self contained game.

I know there are games in the $10-15 range (Savage Worlds) but good ones are kind of few and far between, and not really in the same being kind of lightweight in content (rules light games can focus on fluff instead of mechanics). I'd be curious to know what games come in under $30 that include quality binding, a known pedigree (people have heard of it) and a fully fleshed out game not needing multiple books to really get a good gaming experience. RQ6 is avialable as a PDF for $25, a much better bargain than many companies offer for their PDFs (many seek almost full price).

I get the price of gaming has risen, I'm just not seeing that RQ6 or BRP has risen beyond their logical competition, particularly when you look at the rather reasonable prices for their PDFs.

The original MECHANIODS series. Good setting, and good (K. Siembeda) art. Okay rules. IMO better than the latter version (IMO Palladium stuff went downhill once they included SDC). And yes, it was on newsprint. Mechanodis was NOT what I was thinking about when I was taking about a pretty game with bad rules.

Early Palladium was kinda of cross between old RQ and old D&D. It was a level/increasing HP game, but it used skills, and active defense (parry), but it also limited the HP progression to 1D6 per level. Once they added SCD, and ways to up your HP to D&D levels, the system became less interesting for me.

Nice artwork adds to a game, but you have to have a good game to begin with., When you are playing, you can't just sit there and look at the pretty pictures. And these days, GMs have the ability to find a print art that they need for the game. A lot of those pretty games are just like coffee table books, nice to look at but nothing in them.

Those old cheap looking RPGs were usually a lot of fun to play.

I bet there is still a market for a not so pretty, but a fun PDF in the $5-$10 range. I think that a trimmed down BRP/RQ type game along the lines of Metagaming's The Fantasy Trip with some good cheap adventures could probably do very well.

Palladium has always come up with cool ideas, but I've always been let down by the rules, both style and consistancy. I get the feeling KS is more of a setting guy and the rules are kind of an inconvieniant neccessary evil for him. Of course the attitude does him no favors either.

I agree that I think there is a market for inexpensive PDF games, I'm not a PDF guy but I've bought quite a few just because they are cheap, don't really take up any space and at the very least are good for mining ideas from. I recently picked up Mythic Russia for Heroquest with the intent of using it with RQ6.

By the way, Dark City Games' Legends of the Ancient World, a re-creation of The Fantasy Trip, is free, and its modules are relatively cheap.

Neat, TFT was a game I completely missed and have always been curious about.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Toadmaster

[Baron]

I wouldn't pay $25 for a pdf. But then, if I'm going to use a book, I have to have hardcopy. I don't mind a free pdf version when I buy hardcopy, it's kind of neat, but I would never buy just a pdf. I find them awkward to use, and no replacement for an actual, physical book.

And as far as the price of gaming rising, well, the price of lots of things has gone up. But it's the the whole supply vs demand thing. I won't pay more than something is worth to me (obviously). I'd like a Maserati, but I wouldn't pay that much for a car even if I could afford it; it just makes no sense to me to spend that much money on a car. Ditto with lots of products in my local supermarket. Price yourself out of my range, and I go find something else.

[seneschal]

"HERO again has a $39 players guide with additional books required by the GM"

That's part of the reason I stopped with 5th edition (which was $40 for a single volume). And it really did stop small caliber bullets. With 6th edtion, you'd be invulnerable!

The Big Gold Book and Call of Cthulhu are both still in the $30-$40 range, less if you hit Chaosium's boo-boo books section. The extra $15-$20 for RuneQuest 6, however, gives those of us with kids, a mortgage, and a skeptical non-gamer spouse pause. It wouldn't be quite the same as going out and buying a bass boat on the sly, but the reaction of significant others might be similar.

On the affordable gaming front (this offer not often seen in stores) ...

Mini Six was $8 including shipping, still free as PDF (the current print run has sold out). A quick, fun distillation of the D6 System rules, complete with multiple sample settings.

Classic Traveller is a bargain, with Books 0-8 selling for slightly less than the $40 Mongoose core book.

Labyrinth Lord, $22 for retro-clone dungeon-crawling goodness. (Although Mazes and Minotaurs is easier to digest and is free, but consists of three volumes that you have to print and bind yourself for about $30).

But my original point was that I was delighted to see RuneQuest 6, about which I'd read so much, actually on a local store shelf. But only one copy, and a tad pricey for those not already RQ fanatics. In general, Basic Roleplaying and its variants are under-represented on store shelves, based on my admittedly provincial and non-scientific research.

Edited October 22, 2012 by seneschal

[rust]

I get the price of gaming has risen, I'm just not seeing that RQ6 or BRP has risen beyond their logical competition ...

True, but my decision to buy a product or not is based upon the relation between the

product's price and that part of my income which I can spend for my hobby, not upon

the relation between the product's price and the prices of competing products. Unfor-

tunately the fact that the price of gaming has risen has not caused my income to rise

by an equivalent amount ...

[Toadmaster]

"HERO again has a $39 players guide with additional books required by the GM"

That's part of the reason I stopped with 5th edition (which was $40 for a single volume). And it really did stop small caliber bullets. With 6th edtion, you'd be invulnerable!

The Big Gold Book and Call of Cthulhu are both still in the $30-$40 range, less if you hit Chaosium's boo-boo books section. The extra $15-$20 for RuneQuest 6, however, gives those of us with kids, a mortgage, and a skeptical non-gamer spouse pause. It wouldn't be quite the same as going out and buying a bass boat on the sly, but the reaction of significant others might be similar.

On the affordable gaming front (this offer not often seen in stores) ...

Mini Six was $8 including shipping, still free as PDF (the current print run has sold out). A quick, fun distillation of the D6 System rules, complete with multiple sample settings.

Classic Traveller is a bargain, with Books 0-8 selling for slightly less than the $40 Mongoose core book.

Labyrinth Lord, $22 for retro-clone dungeon-crawling goodness. (Although Mazes and Minotaurs is easier to digest and is free, but consists of three volumes that you have to print and bind yourself for about $30).

But my original point was that I was delighted to see RuneQuest 6, about which I'd read so much, actually on a local store shelf. But only one copy, and a tad pricey for those not already RQ fanatics. In general, Basic Roleplaying and its variants are under-represented on store shelves, based on my admittedly provincial and non-scientific research.

Sorry I guess really didn't get the point. It seemed like a complaint that BRP et al had no presense on the shelves and oh by the way they cost too much.

For what it's worth I'm not immune to the need to budget between needs (food, mortgage, gas etc) and "oooh, that's cool". In fact RQ6 was my first significant RPG purchase in several years.

[Atgxtg]

D&D 4th ed Players handbook is $35 and two more books are required by at least the GM to play, Gurps Characters is $39 and again, at least the GM has to buy a minimum of another $35 book to play, HERO again has a $39 players guid with additional books required by the GM, BRP is $45, so I'm really not seeing $60 as that big a stretch for a quality self contained game

And look how the hobby is doing. There was a time when our local gaming group used to buy nearly every RPG that came down the line. Then we scaled it down to a handful of systems. Now we don't even keep up with all the product for one system. THe high prices have a lot to do with that/ Also the poor quality of products out there and the need to suck the lifeblood out of the fanbase by spinning off everything into a series of supplements.

I know there are games in the $10-15 range (Savage Worlds) but good ones are kind of few and far between,

The same can be said of games above the $10-15 range. A lot of systems have come out with new editions that did not really improve upon the previous edtion in any way. At one time a new edition meant a chance for a company to improve a game, now companies print a new edtion every few years just to get people to but the core rule books all over again.

Palladium has always come up with cool ideas, but I've always been let down by the rules, both style and consistancy. I get the feeling KS is more of a setting guy and the rules are kind of an inconvenient neccessary evil for him. Of course the attitude does him no favors either. [/quote

Yeah. KS's attitude and overzealousness in protecting Palladium probably ended up hurting the system's sales (and poularity) more than the stuff KS worked so hard to get off the net.

I thing as a standalone, a PDF works if it is short. People will print a short PDF any play it. A longer PDF is a bit expensive to print, and sop is only good if it is something vital enough to justify the cost, or modular enough that you can print off the stuff you need, when you need it. .

Originally it was a fairly simple system. Each character had three stats (STR, IQ, and DEX) to spend their points on. STR doubled as HP, tripled as magic points, and determined what weapons you could wield, IQ determined what skills and spells you could know, and DEX was your effective skill rating with weapons and such.

The original MELEE and WIZARD solo adventures were just detailed enough to flesh out a character while still being simple. The "Advanced" books helped turn TFT into a nearly complete RPG. It still had some bugs. Especially over the long haul.

It eventually wound up as GURPS, more or less.

What made TFT attractive is pretty much the same things that turn many people away from GURPS. TFT was simle and easy to play, and had a lot of detail for it's day, without the complexity that most of it's contemporaries did. Think Tunnels & Trolls simplicity with a game system to back it up.

[seneschal]

The Legends of the Ancient World core rules are only 4 pages long, the magic system stretches it to 7. The free scenarios available add a bestiary. There are also free downloadable terrain maps and paper miniatures. I long ago parted with my copies of Melee and Wizard, but Legends is a pretty reasonable facsimile as far as I can tell.

"Sorry I guess really didn't get the point. It seemed like a complaint that BRP et al had no presense on the shelves."

That was the point. Of course, I know where to find out about the latest D100 products and how to order them. But potential new players wouldn't have a clue. No matter how venerable RuneQuest or Call of Cthulhu have become, younger generations of gamers could very easily have never heard of or actually seen them. As a new gamer, I'd possibly have played Pokemon or Savage Worlds or The Board Game Formerly Known as Prince, er, D&D with my buds. Collectible card games I might even be able to pick up at Walmart. But without shelf presence at a local game shop or some sort of advertising in a venue I frequent, I'll never know that D100 games of any stripe exist, much less that they might actually be fun to play.

[Atgxtg]

Where in Legends of the Ancients available at? I'm willing to look at it.

I'm also thinking of trimming down BRP a bit to see how it looks, and how small I can get it and still have a unusable system. I'm thinking old BRP and old Magic World would be about the way to start.although updayted to current rules, and with a couple of simplifications. I could see dropping starting skill % for each skill, and just using skill categories.

[seneschal]

www.darkcitygames.com

Well worth checking out if you're an old Fantasy Trip or Melee fan, or if you wish you had been.

[Atgxtg]

Thanks for the link. I checked it out and it does have a nice set of TFT core rules. There are a few thing's I'd like to have seen changed (ST damage modifier for one, opposed combat rolls to hit for another), but it is definitely workable.

[Toadmaster]

Well personally I don't think the hobby is doing all that poorly, but maybe I'm just being a glass is half full kind of guy.

I think more than price there is something of option paralysis, not exactly a bad thing (choice is great) but it certainly does make it hard to keep up on everything and splinters the base. I remember in the 80s we would probably jump into a new game every other month when someone bought something new and cool. Of course we had our standby games we always came back to, but we were always willing to give something different a try. I'm not sure that newer gamers are so willing to try out new games, which makes it kind of hard when there are so many to choose from.

As you said all these game options also makes it hard to keep up with new releases. I'm not able to keep up just with the new BRP stuff.

I think PDFs will start to play a bigger role. I'm a diehard paper guy but now that I have a tablet that makes a PDF ultra portable, I'm not so resistant to PDFs for secondary gaming stuff. I want a book for the stuff I really want but the stuff I'm just mildly intereted in a PDF is ok now. With the new 7" tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 bringing the price for a basic tablet under $200 I think you will see a big upswing in the interest in PDFs. There is also a growing push for software game aids. RQ6 just created a gaming app for Android smart phones and tablets.

Companies that embrace PDFs and new technology will probably do fine, those that don't will struggle. Interestingly to me, it seems like the big guys are the ones having the hardest time with change. So this may be a good thing for the little guys.

I may be in the minority, but since I found the intenet in the late 1990s I've been reading posts about how the hobby is dying. My response then and now is still, "Dude I'm talking about games to people in Nebraska, Germany and Australia!"

Now if I could just find some locally.

[Baron]

Back in the 80's, our group was able to give most every new game a try, while still running ongoing campaigns in our favorites. Nowadays I can't even remain aware of all the new and niche games out there. 'Splintered' doesn't cover it by half. I feel like I'm standing in a blizzard.

Regarding the internet, yes you can discuss games with people all over the world, which is nice. But it's not a replacement for local gamers. Our numbers have decreased, and it's not as easy to put a decent face-to-face group together anymore.

[seneschal]

Back in the 80's, our group was able to give most every new game a try, while still running ongoing campaigns in our favorites. Nowadays I can't even remain aware of all the new and niche games out there. 'Splintered' doesn't cover it by half. I feel like I'm standing in a blizzard.

Regarding the internet, yes you can discuss games with people all over the world, which is nice. But it's not a replacement for local gamers. Our numbers have decreased, and it's not as easy to put a decent face-to-face group together anymore.

Exactly. Add to this the difficulty of attracting new players in general, regardless of the game. In the '70s and '80s I was playing with my high school and then college peers, who have now scattered to the four winds. Imagine me trying to attract newbies to my campaign at the local game shop (or library), potential players possibly decades younger than myself. What are Mom and Dad going to think when this 50-something-year-old guy approaches their 11-17-year-old son or daughter (who came in to buy Magic the Gathering cards) with the line: "Psssst! Hey kid. Ya wanna play RuneQuest?" [insert disturbing leer]

I can only rarely get my own wife and children to play, especially since my son discovered football. "Awwwww, Daaaaaaad! Not another one of those imagination games!" Like that's a bad thing.

[Baron]

"Awwwww, Daaaaaaad! Not another one of those imagination games!" Like that's a bad thing.

LOL! Too funny!

In general, sounds like your life and mine have run in parallel... My daughter is very temperamental about whether she'll play an rpg, and which one. My wife no longer humors me at all; gaming is "not her thing." But I'd love to have a regular group again!

[Atgxtg]

Well personally I don't think the hobby is doing all that poorly, but maybe I'm just being a glass is half full kind of guy.

Just down drown in a half full tub.

Yes, the hobby is doing poorly. Every single RPG company went under of split up, including powerhouse TSR (wnet under/bought up by WotC), and BRP publsiher Chaosium (split into several companies). Chaosium is the only old RPG conmpnay that is still around in some form.

I think more than price there is something of option paralysis, not exactly a bad thing (choice is great) but it certainly does make it hard to keep up on everything and splinters the base. I remember in the 80s we would probably jump into a new game every other month when someone bought something new and cool. Of course we had our standby games we always came back to, but we were always willing to give something different a try. I'm not sure that newer gamers are so willing to try out new games, which makes it kind of hard when there are so many to choose from.

As you said all these game options also makes it hard to keep up with new releases. I'm not able to keep up just with the new BRP stuff.

The high price isn't bad in an of itself. Sure, nobody wants to pay more for anything -that's life. What is bad is that many companies have turned RPGs and supplements into a process. Things are deliberately left vague so that they can be used as an excuse to make a supplement. Hence a host of RPGs with sketchy rules that use a setting that breaks the player group up into clans, tribes, species, scout troop, baseball teams, classes, prestige classes, or what not.

In the old days the rule books crammed full of whatever rules the authors thought of, and supplements came about as they added to, expanded upon, or revised the game. But now, it's pretty much a design choice to break stuff up in advance so they can sell you more books. Look at FFG's new Star Wars RPG with three beta releases of the rules selling at $40 a pop. That's $120 total for playtest rules!

WotC has turned D&D into a collectible card game by spreading everything out into a series of supplements. Players shell out money for books on prestigue classess, races, equipment, magic items/spell, etc.etc.

I think PDFs will start to play a bigger role. I'm a diehard paper guy but now that I have a tablet that makes a PDF ultra portable

I've got a handheld PC, and have had one for a decade, and frankly, PDF doesn't replace hard copy. You can flip though a hardcopy much faster than a tablet, and you don't have to wait. I also find that you generally can't read a full page layout on a tablet as easily as a actual page of paper.

If PDFs do start to play a bigger role it will be a bad thing. Much of the fututre of RPGs is going to be with on-line play, and that kills off paper & pencil gaming. RPGs as we know them are on the way out. If PDFs start to play a bigger role, we will see fewer things in print.

I may be in the minority, but since I found the intenet in the late 1990s I've been reading posts about how the hobby is dying. My response then and now is still, "Dude I'm talking about games to people in Nebraska, Germany and Australia!"

Now if I could just find some locally.

And that's just it. You can't find people locally anymore. Years ago, I could go to a local convention or local gaming store and take about games to lots of people. We even played them. Today, I have to talk with people on the internet because most of the local options have vanished. My home town went from 5 RPG shops (at it's peak) down to 1 & 1/2 (the second store is open 3 days a week, maybe).

Your experience proves out point. There are fewer people out there gaming. Don't let the ability to find people to chat with online fool you. THe net lets to reach out a interact with a larger segment of the population than you can locally. It's like finding gorgeous babes in skimpy bikinis. On the net, they are easy to find. In fact, if you not careful, you can trip over them with any net search. Doesn't mean you will find that many in your neighborhood. Heck, I can't find that many and I'm living at a beach resort town.

[Atgxtg]

I think it's similar for all us ol' timers.

Great post about the 80s,BTW. It was the same for me too.

[rust]

Chaosium is the only old RPG conmpnay that is still around in some form.

Not really, I am aware of at least a dozen old RPG companies which are still

in the business, for example Columbia Games, Fantasy Games Unlimited, Fly-

ing Buffalo or Tri Tac Games.

[seneschal]

LOL! Too funny!

In general, sounds like your life and mine have run in parallel... My daughter is very temperamental about whether she'll play an rpg, and which one. My wife no longer humors me at all; gaming is "not her thing." But I'd love to have a regular group again!

My daughter is the one family member who might be amenable to role-playing. She likes fantasy and dragons and enjoyed sessions of Buck Rogers and Mazes and Minotaurs. But homework and cheerleading are serious contenders for her time, and a one-on-one game is tough when everyone else is watching TV or playing X-box (darn electronics! Who did that Edison guy think he was, anyway?).

[seneschal]

Not really, I am aware of at least a dozen old RPG companies which are still in the business, for example Columbia Games, Fantasy Games Unlimited, Flying Buffalo or Tri Tac Games.

Sorta true. Flying Buffalo is still actively promoting Tunnels & Trolls, but like BRP it lacks shelf presence (but see post upthread). FGU and Tri Tac are websites only, selling (lots of) decades-old titles with new books rare or non-existent. Again, no shelf presence. Tri Tac has absorbed the IP of several other small companies, which at least gives it more games to offer. Far Future Enterprises offers Classic Traveller both in reprints and on CD, but the reprints are gradually selling out of stock and are no longer found in stores. Hero Games, in its third or fourth incarnation, just recently seriously downsized to a skeleton of its former self. The Second Coming of Iron Crown Enterprises is still promoting Rolemaster and HARP, but I haven't seen their products actually on shelves in at least 15 years. The Pacesetter name as been acquired by Goblinoid Games, which is offering TimeMaster via Lulu.com and in PDF form (Chill and Star Ace are still owned by other companies).

So T&T, Space Opera, Psi World, It Came From the Late Late Late Show, Stalking the Night Fantastic, Rolemaster 2 (Electric Boogaloo!), MegaTraveller, et. al., are indeed still available -- but increasingly only in electronic format from tiny legacy publishers with little or no advertising budget, no physical product distribution, no means of attracting new players. As an old fart who still remembers them, I know how to hunt them down out of nostalgia. But that 11- to 17-year-old potential new player mentioned above doesn't know that they or their publishers ever existed, isn't going to be introduced to them by his peers (unless his Dad or Uncle or much older Brother has a copy), isn't going to see them at a game shop or convention or Walmart or anywhere. As far as new gamers are concerned, they as well be out of business.

[rust]

As an old fart who still remembers them, I know how to hunt them down out of nostalgia. But that 11- to 17-year-old potential new player mentioned above doesn't know that they or their publishers ever existed ...

This is certainly true, but, well, that's how it goes. Just try to find the music of

Quicksilver Messenger Service or Kaleidoscope at a normal media shop, or to see

a movie with Spencer Tracy at a cinema, or to ask a teenager what he knows

about them. We are old farts now, partially living in what today's teenagers are

likely to consider the distant past, so our games are not their games, and rather

unlikely to become their games, no matter how hard we try to convince them of

their merits.

[Toadmaster]

Not really sure about the gaming population. I have always assumed the difficulty in finding local players had a lot to do with the fact I'm not hanging around highschools and colleges anymore (the restraining order took care of that ). I don't make friends at work like I did in school so I don't have the easy access to people I did when I was a kid.

I think most of us are in the same boat, finding adult gamers is not as easy to do and trying to bring in younger gamers has the potential to look creepy, plus honestly playing a game with a bunch of 12 year olds doesn't sound as great as it was when I was 12.

[Atgxtg]

As seneschal noted, most of those companies are "in business" in name only. I think FGU was dead, but somebody realized that they could scan old stuff and make it available for sale as PDFs. I managed to finally acquire the one Flashing Blades supplement I was missing that way. But it's not like FGU is going to come up with anything new. Columbia might still be around, but since N. Robin Crossby passed away, who cares.

[Atgxtg]

Not really sure about the gaming population. I have always assumed the difficulty in finding local players had a lot to do with the fact I'm not hanging around highschools and colleges anymore (the restraining order took care of that ). I don't make friends at work like I did in school so I don't have the easy access to people I did when I was a kid.

It's not that. They teenagers and college kids aren't playing RPGs like you did. Between CCGs and Video/Computer Games there isn't as much interest in paper & pencil RPGs. Especially if you are looking for something other than D&D.

I think most of us are in the same boat, finding adult gamers is not as easy to do and trying to bring in younger gamers has the potential to look creepy, plus honestly playing a game with a bunch of 12 year olds doesn't sound as great as it was when I was 12.

Some truth to that, but not as much as you might think. Those kid gamers aren't gaming anymore.

[RosenMcStern]

I think most of us are in the same boat, finding adult gamers is not as easy to do and trying to bring in younger gamers has the potential to look creepy, plus honestly playing a game with a bunch of 12 year olds doesn't sound as great as it was when I was 12.

Composition of my current HeroQuest group: 1 40+ GM, 5 players aged 30 to 50, GM's daughter (18), Gianni's children (approx. 12 and 15); the kiddos are by far the most enterprising players

Composition of my summertime RuneQuest group: six players GMing round-robin, 12-yr-old son of one player, who now demands to be there even if father misses the session.

We have tried to "corrupt" my daughter (12), too, but so far we only managed to have her play Tunnels & Trolls with Gianni at Eternal.

So no, it is not necessarily creepy to have 12 year old at your gaming table. It is just a matter of having been... creepy with their mothers 12 years before